Amid the Sorrowful Rain
by Ravenblackdove
Summary: Two lonely souls face off in a vicious battle of futility. The falling rain is the only witness of this lonely fight.


His heart raced. Oh how it raced. Never before had he felt like this. With eyes tightly shut and lungs gasping for air, Mezzan sat in his AC, face to face with a dangerous shadow in the dreary darkness of the forgotten city. The sound of the rain pouring down against the cold metal of the hulking, black monolith he piloted reached his ears loudly, as though there wasn't three thousand tons of heavy steel between him and the outside world.

He would die here. That was the thought that repeated in his mind. He would die in this cold and lonely place. He'd fought so hard and so long just to stay alive but now it would be for nothing. She would see to that.

"You still alive in there?" her voice came through the radio, her sarcasm audible in every word. The dark violet machine that had come to kill him stood waiting for him. It waited like a predator, a bloodlust radiating like none ever seen. They'd had a history after all. It wasn't a good one, but it was history enough to let him know she was holding his death in her hands. She and her machine were both tuned for the savage, yet beautifully graceful arts of killing.

"Lexin," he pleaded between gasps. "don't."

"Don't what?" she shot back. "Don't kill you? Don't take out my frustrations on you? Don't get revenge on you for what you did to my father?"

"Lexin, I've told you before," Mezzan argued desperately. "I didn't do that on purpose."

"Right," disbelief rang out in her reply. "Everyone always says it isn't their fault. No one ever wants to admit what's their fault! Are you really going to stand there and give me that bullshit?"

"We don't need to do this!" Mezz shouted. "This isn't even a job anymore! The fight is over!"

"You're damn right it's not a job anymore!" She projected her hate as she screamed into the radio. "But the fight has never been more on than it is right now!"

Every rain drop seemed to sing a song of sadness as it splashed down amid the lifeless city of twisted steel and gloomy concrete. The two warriors were faced off in a street that hadn't seen traffic in so many years. Mezzan could feel the cold encroaching on his hands and fingers. As the warmth of his body steadily left him through a stream of blood that poured from his side, he began to feel less and less in his extremities. His feet were blocks of ice in his boots. His breath was ragged. His thoughts were chaotic. He struggled to keep awake as sleep tugged at him like a needy child. And then it happened.

Lexin's machine burst forth with a sudden blast of her over boost engines. The powerful turbines propelled her forward with violent speed, machine gun in hand, and bullets tearing through the air toward her opponent. The sounds of war filled the city and echoed through the hollow frames of long abandoned sky scrapers. Mezzan jerked his rig back and to the side, struggling to keep himself out of his adversary's warpath. Water vaporized instantly as the searing hot flames of his booster jets pulled him off the ground and around the corner, keeping him low and putting a structure between him and his attacker.

The skillful dodge was to no avail. Within the blink of an eye, she was right on top of him. He let out a frightened shout as his reflexes reacted for him, thrusting his laser blade through the side of her formidable weapon and knocking it from her grip. Lexin cried out in anger as she answered his move with a fist to his AC's face. Metal smashed against metal with a resonating sound. Almost as soon as she had pulled her fist back, she reverse thrusted to get some distance and opened up with a fury of missiles.

Mezzan's eyes became wide as they focused on the screaming arrows that came for him. His interception system kicked in and tried to blast them down but it was too slow. Two were hit but the rest were driven by purpose. He tried to reverse thrust to escape the incoming swarm. It did him no good. One flew past the AC's head, missing by too narrow a margin to inspire confidence. One more crashed into his left leg, just above the knee, taking his AC down. The last impacted hard on his right shoulder. The explosion shook him violently, filling his body with pain that radiated from the wound at his waist. Shrapnel and burning chunks of metal were thrown from the blast, some slamming into the side of his crippled machine's head.

Mezzan focused his eyes hard, trying to get a clear look at his opponent. The impact to his AC's head must have knocked something loose in the main camera. The picture flashed in and out between bursts of white snow. Each repetition showed a feint, yet ominous silhouette amid the torrent of rain. Slowly, the shadow became clearer. She was approaching.

"Are you dead yet?" She asked. "Well, Mezzan?"

"Don't do this," he answered.

Lexin drew back her laser blade hand and lunged for him. "Stop saying that!" she screamed. Furiously, she thrusted her blade at him, burning a path through the rain and returning thousands of liquid spheres back to the gaseous atmosphere. Mezzan desperately parried with his own laser blade. Attack after attack, he defended as she relentlessly came down on him with every fiber of hatred and anger she was composed of. "I'm going to burn you out of existence!" she shouted. "I'm going to cut you out of my life!"

"Stop!" he cried back. "Please!"

His pleas fell on deaf ears. Hydraulics slid fluidly in and out as they drove the massive arms of her armored core, battering her prey as he stumbled back in a futile attempt to break away.

"I'll kill you for what you've done!" tears welled up in her furious eyes.

"You did it!" Her blade collided hard against his.

"All of you did it!" It crashed again.

"No one is without blame!" Again.

"I'll kill you!" Once again they collided.

"I'll kill everyone!"

Mezzan blocked a final blow before Lexin finally stopped. He gasped heavily for air as he stared up at his attacker with disbelief. She loomed over him as they both sat motionless, catching their breaths.

"Is that really how you feel, Lexin?" he asked. "You really think the whole world is the cause of your sadness?"

"No one helped me," she said, crying through every word. "No one helped my dad. Everyone just turned their backs and left me on my own. And any time I tried to get back on my feet, someone was always there to throw it in my face and take everything from me. They took him from me. You took him from me." 

A knot formed in his throat and tears filled his eyes. "I tried," he forced his words through his sorrow. "You know I tried to save him. There wasn't anything I could-" 

"Shut up!" she cut him off. "Don't give me that excuse! You were there, you could have done something! And then where were you when I needed you? Where was anybody? You weren't there when I needed you."

Tears fell silently from her eyes and onto the console in front of her. Their landing was muted in comparison to that of the rain. "I'll never forgive you," she said with a raspy voice.

"I tried," Mezzan whispered. "What can I do to convince you? Tell me what I have to do to make things right for you?"

The two machines stood perfectly still, Lexin's AC kneeling over Mezzan's, poised to deal death into her enemy's hand. They were still in the cold air of the forgotten city, still while the rainfall surrounded their sorrowful death match. Their frames were marked by sadness. Mezzan listened. He listened over the slowing beat of his heart and through the rain for the answer to his question. And then it came and all else fell quiet.

"You should die," she said softly, a sad sincerity in her voice. It was almost as though she were asking him without hate, without anger, without demand, just asking him. A brief silence fell between them and it seemed like nothing around them made a sound. The rain poured down but all was quiet. And then she lunged one more time, laser blade pointed just right for a killing stroke.

And in that moment, Mezzan sighed. He watched her pivot. He saw her aim. He gazed as her attack began to move. Everything reached his perceptions as though it was all in slow motion. It was just a gentle push. His finger depressing the button was more like a quiet acceptance. And with that push, his fight came to an end.

Lexin thrusted her blade forward for her final attack. This would be it. She would end it here. And as her blade neared its target, her eyes turned to horror as she watched the laser blade of her prey flicker out. It had been the only thing standing between them and now it was gone. The searing edge of her energy weapon dove into his armor and sank in as though they had always meant to be a part of each other. She hurried to shut it off as she realized what had happened.

As quickly as her body would allow, she threw off her harness and opened the hatch. Jumping down to the body of her rival AC, she frantically made her way inside, through the open wound in the now pathetic behemoth. The instant Mezzan came into view, she froze. The blade had burned right through, severing his torso at the waist. Rain drops intermingled with the expanding pool of crimson.

"You did that on purpose." she cried. "You did that on purpose! You…"

Lexin's words trailed off. She stared down at him, reaching down inside herself and praying with everything she had that this was all just a dream. His eyes looked deeply into hers, holding tight to his last few moments. His lungs would no longer draw breath, but his eyes said all that he needed. It wasn't fear that she saw in his eyes. It wasn't even really sadness. It tore her up inside looking down at him like this. 

"I'll be ok," she said, choking back the urge to cry. "I promise."

And with that, she kneeled in and uttered softly to him before her lips met his, "I love you."

All the vengeance she had, the hatred, all that drove her to anger was gone. She let it go that night, never to claim it again. It was that night she realized how wrong she had been, and she couldn't have regretted it more than in that moment. Because it wasn't fear that she had seen in his eyes. It wasn't even really sadness. No. The look she saw in his eyes as he lay there dying…

…was concern.


End file.
